onesty
did not give a seeming excuse to pruriency; and it is this fact,
that freedom in the artistic presentation of the sexual problems
has invariably led to license, which has in many successive ages of
literature forced the artist back to restraint, and has made him content
to be bound by a rigid puritanism. In the beat of the eternal pendulum
of taste it seems ordained that puritanism shall become so very
puritanic that art shall grow tired of its bonds, and that liberty in
turn shall grow offensive, and shall compel art by an overmastering
instinct to return towards puritanism.

It is France which has led the way in the latest protest against the
restrictions imposed by modern taste upon art. It may be admitted as a
fact that those restrictions were felt severely, for it is obvious
that until they began to chafe there was no likelihood of their being
violently broken. The chief apostle of the new movement towards entire
freedom is, of course, Emile Zola. After having excited for many years
an incredulous amazement and disgust, he is now almost universally
recognised as an honest and honourable artist, and as a great master in
his craft. Nobody who is at all instructed ventures any longer to say
that Zola is indecent because he loves indecency, or is pleased by the
contemplation of the squalid and obscene. We see him as he truly is--a
pessimist in humanity--sad and oppressed, and bitter with the gall of a
hopeless sympathy with suffering and distorted mankind.

One English artist, whom, in the just language of contemporary
criticism, it is no exaggeration to describe as great, has elected
(rather late in life for so strong a departure) to cast in his lot with
the new school. That his ambitions are wholly honourable it would be
the mere vanity of injustice to deny. That his new methods contrast very
unfavourably with his old ones, that he is lending the weight of his
authority to a movement which is full of mischief, that in obeying in
all sincerity an artistic impulse he is doing a marked disservice to
his own art in particular, and to English art in general, are with me so
many rooted personal convictions; but I dare not pretend that they are
more. Mr. Hardy is just as sincere in his belief that he is right as
I and others among his critics are in our belief that he is wrong. The
question must be threshed out dispassionately and judicially, if it be
faced at all. It cannot be settled by an appeal to personal senti